The High Initiate of Kassau, a town at the northern brink of the forest, sat still in his white robes, in his tall hat, on the throne to the right, within the white rail that separated the sanctuary of Initiates from the common ground of the hall, where those not anointed by the grease of Priest-kings must stand.

I heard a woman sobbing with emotion to my right. “Praise the Priest-Kings,” she repeated endlessly to herself, nodding her head up and down.

Near her, bored, was a slender, blondish girl, looking about. He r hair was hung in a snood of scarlet yarn, bound with filaments of golden wire. She wore, over hershoulder, a cape of white fur of the northern sea sleen. She had a scarlet vest, embroideredin gold, worn over a long-sleeved blouse of white wool, from distant Ar. She wore, too, a log woollen skirt, dyed red, which was belted with black, with a buckle of gold, wrought in Cos. She wore shoes of black polished leather, which folded about her ankles, laced twice, once across the instep, once about the ankle.

She saw me regarding her with interest, and looked away.

Other wenches, too, were in the crowd. In the northern villages, and in the forest towns, and northward on the coast the woman do not veil themselves, as is common in the cities to the south.

Kassau is the seat of the High Initiate of the north, who claims spiritual sovereignty over Torvaldsland, which is commonly taken to commence with the thinning of the trees northward. This claim, like many of those of the initiates, is disputed by few, and ignored by most. The men of Torvaldsland, on the whole, I knew, while tending to respect Priest-Kings, did not accord themspecial reverence. They held to old gods, and old ways. The religion of the Priest-Kings, institutionalised and ritualised by the castle of Initiates, had made little headway among the primitive men to the north.